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Polar bears need food for nourishment, water to drink and bathe in, shelter, and a safe place to raise their young, according to The National Wildlife Federation. Teach your students how the biggest bear species and largest land predator finds these things to survive in such drastic living conditions with some interactive lesson plans. Incorporating hands-on and informational sessions for this topic makes it more engaging, appealing and exciting to your third to fifth grade students.

A Safe Place to Live

Polar bears need a living environment that matches their dietary and living needs. Point out that polar bears have thick hair and fur to keep them warm; a fur color that blends in with their environment; and a layer of fat to keep them warm in cold temperatures. Open up this activity with a discussion about where your students think polar bears live. Let everyone offer a suggestion. When the suggestions are in, hand each student a piece of construction paper, scissors, and a glue stick. Also provide a worksheet that has several environment options on it, such as a desert, marshland, mountain, tropical island, arctic island, sea ice, icebergs, glaciers, water, frozen tundra and coastlines. Any of the last seven choices would be considered correct. Ask the students to choose a habitat for a polar bear, cut it out, and glue in on their paper. Tell them to color the environment and draw a polar bear family on the sheet.

Home Sweet Home

Polar bears don't hibernate in a den like other bears. In fact, they will do their daily sleeping and take naps just about anywhere, like on ice patches or blocks of ice. However, female polar bears need a safe home to live in while they are pregnant, give birth, and raise their babies. After heavily feeding, pregnant polar bears go into their dens in August or September. According to Polar Bears International, the dens are usually found in snowdrifts along mountain slopes or hills along the sea ice or in snow banks on the frozen sea. After this background discussion, acquire at least four large cardboard boxes, such as refrigerator boxes, white tempura paint and pillow stuffing. Divide the students into groups and allow them to construct a maternal den.

What’s For Dinner?

Explain to your class that a female polar bear weighs between 330 and 660 pounds and a male between 660 and 1,760 pounds. To keep up its fat layer up and maintain its weight, a polar bear needs to eat the right kinds of food. Hand each student a worksheet with several food options on it, such as berries, chickens, spaghetti, seals, zebra, whales, lion, fish and seaweed. After the children have circled their guesses, explain that a polar bear’s diet consists mainly of meat. Although seal is a polar bear favorite, it also eats walrus, caribou and beached whales. Polar bears will also eat grass and seaweed if other options are not available.

Tracking Bears

Tracking polar bears can be a fun way to finish off this lesson. Collect at least five different animal track print worksheets, one of which should be a polar bear footprint. Make several copies and cut them out. Lay the footprints on the ground to create trails of each of the footprints, each leading to a different place. At the end of each set of tracks, place a picture or stuffed toy of the correlating animal.